Meeting Gary Vaynerchuk is always a rollercoaster. The guy thinks, speaks and curses faster than Billy The Kid could shoot. The wine-mogul, founder of Wine Library and Wine Library TV, and current CEO of VaynderMedia is speeding through #SxSW as a young, horny and very happy dog.
From a keynote in his lightning fast #askgaryvee style, through a more thorough interview in the #comcastsxsw media lounge and some quick talks in the hallway and conversations on our Twitter duelling area the following:
Oneliners. Sigh.
Vaynerchuk built his social media career on cursing, quick wits and memorable one-liners. After following the man through a plethora of books and in close to twenty live encounters, I realized during the #askgaryvee session that I got so bored of his one-liners. Here is a man with an amazing story, and a memorable vision, cracking soundbites. That is like listening to Mozart through a drum computer: Entertaining, but good for a throbbing headache. Gary being Gary, you can tell this to the man straight to his face. It’s a great conversation starter.
Underestimated / overestimated
Luckily, the man gets a bit less media victim, and a bit more content savvy when you get to speak to him in a smaller crowd. Gary is convinced that Super Bowl ads are the best deal out there—“90 million viewers at $6 million a pop, and it’s worth $20 million, $30 million, $40 million”. He’s also convinced that Facebook ads are way underestimated, especially when paired with content worth the audience’s attention. Radio is also underestimated, especially when you have the DJ talking about your product or cause: that makes it way more relevant than an ad.
Gary sees a golden future for brands that can turn relevant influencers into powerful ambassadors. Working with human capital will, in the end, trigger the best ROI.
He thinks programmatic, if badly executed, is way overrated, as it delivers messages of poor quality, without any added value for the consumer, in formats that are intrusive. CTR’s well below 1% prove him that the programmatic/content/format/creative/funnel strategy is not optimized at all. “I think badly executed programmatic is the worst shit on earth.”
Fail, forget, forward
Vaynerchuks business pace is not always on a winning strike. But his motto is a sound one: “we all make mistakes. Don’t think about it. Others will do that for you, o they will… learn fast, keep the learning, forget the failure, continue head high. Move on. Forward. Your future is in the future, not in the past.
Yeah, sometimes oneliners DO the trick…
